The Pride of Jennico 9

The Pride of Jennico 9

“Why not?”

 

The whole room whirled round with me.

 

“My God,” I cried, “don’t mock me!”

 

But she, with a new ring of feeling in her voice, said earnestly:

 

“She has such misery before her if her father carries out his will.”

 

To hear these words from her, who of all others must be in her

mistress’s confidence, ought, however amazing to reason and common

sense, to have been a spur to one whose ambition soared so high.

Nevertheless, I hesitated. To be honest with myself, not from a lover’s

diffidence, from a lover’s dread of losing even hope, but rather from

the fear of placing myself in an absurd position—of risking the deadly

humiliation of a refusal.

 

I dared therefore nothing but soft looks, soft words, soft pressures of

the hand; and the Princess received them all as she received everything

that had gone before. From one in her position this might seem of

itself encouragement enough in all conscience; but I waited in vain

for some break in her unruffled composure—some instant in which I

could mark that the Princess was lost in the woman. And so what drew

me most to her kept me back. At the same time a rooted distrust of the

little lady-in-waiting, a certain contempt, too, for her personality

as belonging to that roture so despised of my great-uncle and myself,

prevented me from placing confidence in her.

 

But she, nevertheless, precipitated the climax. It was three days after

the scene in my great-uncle’s room, one Sunday morning, beside the

holy-water font in the little chapel of Schreckendorf Castle, whither,

upon the invitation of its present visitors—my own priest being ill,

poor man, of an ague—I had betaken myself to hear mass. The Princess

had passed out first, and had condescended, smiling, to brush the

pious drops from my finger; but Mademoiselle Ottilie paused as she too

touched with hers my outstretched hand, and said in my ear as crossly

as a spoilt child:

 

“You are not a very ardent lover, M. de Jennico. The days are going by;

the Countess Schreckendorf is beginning to speak quite plain again. It

is impossible that her Highness should be left in this liberty much

longer.”

 

I caught her hand as she would have hurried away.

 

“If I could be sure that this is not some foolish jest,” I said in a

fierce whisper in her ear.

 

And she to me back again as fiercely:

 

“You are afraid!” she said with a curling lip.

 

That settled it.

 

I rode straight home, though I was expected to have joined the ladies

in some expedition. I spent the whole day in a most intolerable state

of agitation; and then, my mind made up, I sat down after supper to

write, beneath my uncle’s portrait. And the first half of the night

went by in writing and re-writing the letter which was to offer the

hand and heart of Basil Jennico to the Princess Marie Ottilie of

Lausitz.

 

I wrote and tore up till the ground around me was strewn with the

fragments of paper; and now I seemed too bold, when the whole

incongruity and absurdity of my desire took tangible form to mock me in

the silence of the night; and now too humble, when in the flickering

glimmer of candle-light my great-uncle would frown down upon me, and I

could hear him say:

 

“Remember that thou Jennico bist!”

 

At last a letter lay before me by which I resolved to abide. I believe

that it was an odd mixture of consciousness of my own temerity in

aspiring so high, and at the same time of conviction that the house of

Jennico could only confer, and not receive, honour. I even proposed to

present myself boldly with my credentials at the Court of Lausitz (and

here of course the famous pedigree came in once more), and I modestly

added that, considering my wealth and connections, I ventured to hope

the Duke, her father, might favourably consider my pretensions.

 

This written and sealed, I was able to sleep for the rest of the night,

but was awake again with dawn and counting the minutes until I could

decently despatch a mounted messenger to Schreckendorf.

 

When the man rode forth I believe it was a little after eight; and I

know that it was on the stroke of one when I heard his horse’s hoofs

ringing again in the courtyard. But time had no measure for the strange

agony of doubt in which I passed those hours, not (once again have I to

admit it) because I loved her too dearly to bear the thought of life

without her, but because of my fierce pride, which would not brook the

shame of a refusal.

 

I called in a frenzy to hurry the lagging fool into my presence; and

yet when he laid the letter on my table I stared at the great seal

without daring to open it. And when at last I did so my hand trembled

like an aspen leaf.

 

“Monsieur de Jennico,” it began abruptly, “I ought to call you mad,

for what you propose is nothing less indeed than madness. You little

know the fetters that bind such lives as mine, and I could laugh and

weep together to think of what the Duke, my father, would say were you

really to present yourself before him as you suggest.”

 

So it ran, and as I read I thought I was contemned, and in my fury

would have crushed the letter in my hand, when a word below caught my

eye, and with an intensity of joy on a par only with the passion of

wounded pride that had preceded it, I read on:

 

“But, dear Monsieur de Jennico,” so ran the letter then, “since you

love me, and since you honour me by telling me so; since you offer me

so generously all you have to give, I will be honest with you and tell

you that my present life has no charm for me. I know only too well

what the future holds for me in my own home, and I am willing to trust

myself to you and to your promises rather than face the lot already

drawn for me.

 

“Therefore, Monsieur de Jennico, if it be true that, as you say, all

your happiness depends upon my answer, I trust it may be for the

benefit of both that I should say ’Yes’ to you to-day. But what is

to be must be secretly done, and soon Are you willing, to obtain

your desire, to risk a little, when I am willing to risk so much in

granting it? If so, meet my lady-in-waiting to-day at six, alone,

where we first met, and she will tell you all that I have decided.”

 

It was signed simply—“Marie Ottilie.”

 

There was no hint of answering love to my passionate declaration, but

I did not miss it. I had won my Princess, and the few clear words in

which she laid bare before me the whole extent of my presumption only

added to the exquisite zest of my conquest.

 

It was a very autumn day—autumn comes quickly in these lands. It had

been raining, and I rode down from the higher level into a sea of white

writhing mists. It was still and warm—one of those heavy days that

as a rule seem like to clog the blood and fill one with reasonless

foreboding. I remember all that now; but I know that there was no place

for foreboding in my exulting heart as I sallied out full early to the

trysting-place.

 

The mare I rode, because of the close atmosphere and her own headstrong

temper, was in a great lather when I arrived at the little pine-wood,

and I dismounted and began to lead her gently to and fro (for I loved

the pretty creature, who was as fond and skittish as a woman) that she

might cool by degrees and take no injury. I was petting and fondling

her sleek coat, when of a sudden, without my having had the least

warning of her coming, I turned to find Mademoiselle Ottilie before me.

 

She looked at me straight with one of those odd searching looks which I

had now and again seen her fix upon me; and without either “Good-even”

or “How-do-you-do,” she said abruptly:

 

“I saw you coming all the way along the white road from the moment it

turns the corner, and I saw how your mare fought you, and how difficult

it was to bring her past the great beam of the well yonder. You made

her obey, but you have not left a scratch upon her sides—yet you wear

spurs.”

 

She looked at me with the most earnest inquiry, and, ruffled by the

futility of the question when so much was at stake, I said to her

somewhat sharply:

 

“What has this to do, Mademoiselle, with our meeting here to-day?”

 

“It has this to do, Monsieur,” she answered me composedly, “that her

Highness’s interests are as dear to me as my own, and that I am glad

to learn that the man she is to wed has a merciful heart. I know a

man,” she went on, “in our own country who passes for the finest, the

bravest, the most gallant, but when he brings a horse in from the

chase its legs will be trembling and it will be panting so that it can

scarce draw breath, because the rider is so brave and dashing that he

must go the fastest of all, and he will have left his mark upon the

poor beast’s sides in great furrows where he has ploughed them with his

spurs. He is greatly admired by every one; but his horses die, and his

hounds shrink when he moves his hand: that is what my country-people

call being manly—being a real cavalier!”

 

The scorn of her tone was something beyond the mere girlish pettishness

I generally associated with her; but to me, except as she represented

or influenced her mistress, she had never had any interest. And so

again impatiently I brought her back to the object of our meeting.

 

“Her Highness has entrusted you with a message?” I asked.